


i’m just a ghost out of his grave

by 1771



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Gen, Major Character Death as in All Major Characters are Dead, Pre-Relationship, Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire, car crashes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2020-01-16 09:25:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18518584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1771/pseuds/1771
Summary: It’s not that he’s unobservant, or in denial, or refusing to put together the evidence presented to him. It’s just that this afterlife was pretty similar to being on the run with his mother.Sparrow Hill Road (highway ghosts, basically) AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Sparrow Hill Road is a book written by Seanan McGuire, about a girl who is killed on her prom night and wanders America’s highways as an iconic hitchhiking ghost. If you like ghost stories, fun writing about American highways and culture, or engaging tales of revenge, i’d highly recommend checking it out!  
> But no prior knowledge is needed to read this.  
> There are references to aftg-typical violence (car crashes, threats), and one implied panic attack, but there’s nothing very graphic.  
> Title is from “ Ghosting “ by Mother Mother, characters are all Nora’s.  
> The first thing i wrote for this— just the basic au idea— stayed as its own document for like a month so i think it qualifies to be a subtitle at least, so welcome to  
> “AFTG ghost of whatever hill girl green dress ghost road shit fuck”

Frankly, he’s not sure how long he’s been on the road. There were the years with his mother (her name was Mary— most of the time he remembers this). The two of them were running (running from Nathan— he can always remember that he’s running from Nathan, the Butcher). But his father’s people were waiting for them in Seattle, chased the two of them a fair distance down the coast. They were taking a particularly treacherous turn next to a sheer drop, and they got run off the road.  


When he woke up, he was on the side of an access road that ran along the foot of the cliff, just wide enough for an intrepid traveler to drive down to the beach.  


In front of him, the car was ablaze. He watched it burn down to a smolder before he was able to get up and walk. He wasn’t sure where he was heading— but he had to keep going, and the road was calling him.  


After California, his memory’s hazy for a while. He wandered into the night for what felt like days, staying on the shoulder of a dark, desolate highway. He couldn’t tell if his long, quiet walk was a dream or death or just in his (probably injured) head. He wasn’t tired, or was he so tired he couldn’t tell? He could definitely feel how cold the night air was. A low cloud cover spread across the sky, no stars shining through, but all he had to do was stick to the side of the road and keep walking.  


At some point he came to, only to find himself about a hundred miles away from his starting point, a no-name town in Arizona. He flinched at the idea of his mother’s reaction to his trek. Walking alone across that much desert? He was lucky he didn’t actually freeze to death— he knew deserts dipped below freezing during the night, and even in the mid-morning sun he was shivering.  


He hitched a ride at a rest stop from a woman driving a rig to Denver, spinning her a tale about traveling to visit an aunt in Flagstaff that she doesn’t bother to question. When she saw how he was shivering, she offered him a jacket from the backseat, which he took gratefully. Bundled up inside the cab, he felt warm again for the first time since he’d been watching his mother burn to ash inside a totaled car.  


“What’s your name, kid?” The driver asked as she pulled onto the highway.  


“Neil,” he offered on a whim. “Neil Josten.”

It’s not that he’s unobservant, or in denial, or refusing to put together the evidence presented to him. It’s just that this new life of hitchhiking was remarkably similar to being on the run with his mother. Whether he walked or rode in the bed of a truck, Neil stayed on the move constantly.  
Most of it was simply habit, but once in a while, he’d get an itch. A restless anxiety in his bones that tells him: run, Abram, keep going, he’s right behind you, they’re catching up— sometimes even in his mother’s voice.  


The first time it happened, he was on an old freeway in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana, and he only had a few minutes’ warning before the rumble of a horribly familiar engine cut through the droning of cicadas in the air. He threw himself into the bushes on the side of the road just as a pair of blinding headlights swung around a curve in the road ahead of him. A classic, blood-red convertible careened down the road, and Neil watched its tail lights disappear, frozen, the warning twisting itself up in his guts until he felt like he was ready to burst.  


Eventually the tension faded, and he crawled out of the bushes and kept walking in the other direction, but ever since he’d erred on the side of caution when listening to his gut.  


The world was a little bit weirder when he was traveling alone than with his mother. He’s more reliant on strangers than his mother would’ve ever permitted, but with all of their money and contacts ash along the Pacific coast, hitchhiking was the best he could do and still stay moving. He found himself eating less, but he was used to not eating much when they were in a tight spot. The drivers he hitched with usually took pity on him and bought him a meal. Sometimes people at roadside diners wouldn’t give him a ride but would buy him a burger, and honestly that was a fine trade off by him.  


Sometimes Neil walked away with other people’s jackets pulled tight against the cold, but otherwise, he was living his life. Surviving, like his mother wanted. The days passed in a blur of movement and never-ending roads.  


Sometimes, he could swear he found himself walking the same road again and again. He never noticed the change, the point at which he stopped walking along the highway in Kansas or the winding freeway in Colorado, but he would look up from his feet and find himself on the edge of the same dark asphalt road, indistinct landscape for miles, a low cloud cover overhead. Never any mile markers, never any signs. Other roads and paths crisscross the seemingly endless greyish plane, but Neil doesn’t know where they lead and is never too keen to get lost in this strange dissociation.  


If he keeps walking, he gets off of it eventually, again without noticing the moment when he leaves, usually a random distance and direction from where he thought he had been. While unsettling in the extreme, Neil can’t help but warily treat these random fugue states as an advantage— If even he doesn’t know where he’s going, surely it will make it all the harder for the people following him. The paths that lead off into the distance call to him— surely no one would find him if he couldn’t even find himself. But he sticks to the asphalt and finds his way out everytime.

It’s not until he hitched a ride with a woman transporting pallets of soda cans across Wyoming that everything changed.  


Janie seemed nice, confident enough to take a hitchhiker and content to not make any small talk on their drive to Bozeman. She had a quiet, reedy voice and a strange energy about her that set Neil on edge, although he couldn’t quite pinpoint why.  


It was late, or rather, it was the early hours of the morning, when another rig barreled around a turn and nearly collided with Janie’s. For a moment the blinding headlights from the other cab filled the windshield, and Neil was certain that they’d crash. Then, in a blink the truck passed and they kept driving on into the dark.  


But— it wasn’t quite the same. Neil stared out through the windshield and saw that where five minutes ago there’d been a wide, starry winter sky, now a low cover of clouds drew an unbroken curtain of grey above them. He tried to find the mountain range that had been to the north on the horizon all night, but with no stars to make a contrast all he could see were endless grey plains rushing past in the dark.  


He didn’t fully make the connection until he realized the mile markers had disappeared.  


And now— what? He’d never experienced this long, dark road while in a car, much less while with another person. Could the driver see it too, or was he about to prove to himself that he was way more fucked up than he thought? No way to know except asking.  


“Hey—” Neil coughed to bring his voice down to a more casual octave, “— do you, uh, see that? I think the mile markers stopped.”  


Janie hummed thoughtfully. “Yeah,” she drawled, “That’s weird,” and Neil hadn’t felt so relieved to have another person next to him since his mother died. This road was real enough that they could both see it. But where were they, then?  


Janie drove the rig onwards, headlights cutting through the darkness. After about twenty minutes, she spoke up again, but only to mutter that they should’ve passed through the next small town by now, her brow furrowed as she watched mile after mile of the road stretch on.  


And then something changed— in the distance, the orange neon glow of a dinner shone out over the desolate landscape. Neil balked— he’d never seen any signs of life, the countless times he’d walked these roads. Was it different because he came in with someone else, in a car?  


“You wanna stop for a bite?” Janie asked softly. Neil hummed noncommittally. Food sounded good, it always sounded good, but he didn’t trust anything in this place. Janie pulled into the parking lot anyways, and they both hopped out, Neil pulling the overlarge flannel she’d given him tight against the cold air.  


The diner, or as the sign declared it, ‘The Foxhole’,was old enough to look retro but worn enough to call into question whether it was a decor choice or if it was just plain old. There was a bell above the door that jingled when they entered, but otherwise the dining area was silent. One customer sat in a corner booth, hunched over a sundae, but he didn’t even look up at them when they walked in.  


Janie took a stool at the counter and called out a gentle “Hello?” as Neil joined her.  


Through the window into the kitchen came a strange noise, like a mix between a laugh and someone choking. There was a clatter of metal pans knocking together and a muffed call of “One second!” before someone burst through the swinging door to the kitchen and slid behind the counter.  


He was a young man, older than Neil but not by much, with tan skin and dark hair. He bustled around behind the counter for a second, pulling an apron over his head and grabbing a pad of paper to take down their order.  


“Welcome to the Foxhole!” He announced, like he was speaking to a crowd even though it was still just Neil and Janie at the counter. “I’m Nicky! We’ve got a chicken-fried steak special right now, it comes with a side of home fries and a slice of pie. Everything else is on the menu!” He took a step back and gestured at the large signs above the window to the kitchen with a wide swoop of his arm, like a game show host. “Can I start y’all off with anything to drink?”  


Neil and Janie looked up at the daunting menu with matching wary expressions. Janie found her cool first.  


“I’ll have a strawberry milkshake and a slice of pie, please. Cherry, if you have it.” She nudged Neil with her elbow and gave him a wry smile. “Order up, it’s on me.”  


“Thanks,” Neil mumbled. “I’ll just have a burger and a water.”  


“Our burgers are all cooked medium, is that okay for you?”  


“Sure.”  


“Alrighty,” Nicky clicked the end of his pen a few times as he talked, “I’ll get that right out for y’all. If you need anything, just holler.”  


Janie nodded and Nicky slid back into the kitchen. Neil could see his head bobbing in and out of view through the window, and took the opportunity to scope out the rest of the diner.  


One front door, probably at least one back door through the kitchen (although he couldn’t see it from his seat at the counter). Bathrooms were off to the left, a door on the far end of the countertop to mirror the one Nicky entered through.  


Looking out the window, Neil couldn’t make out much past the light the diner shone into the parking lot. The road just looked dark.  


Only two cars in the parking lot, Janie’s rig and a low, black vintage car— older cars were generally more straightforward to hotwire, so Neil tallied the cars in the lot as two potential exits.  


Finally, Neil’s survey brought him to the only other customer in the diner— presumably the owner of the old car outside. He was a small blond man with large shoulders and a leather jacket, steadily chipping away at a comically complicated ice cream sundae. After a brief moment of Neil watching him, the man turned his head and made eye contact. The man’s eyes narrowed to a glare as he mechanically stuck another spoonful of ice cream in his mouth.  


Nicky burst through the kitchen door to slide Janie’s order and Neil’s water in front of them. “Sorry for the wait! I’ll get that burger out to you in a few minutes,” he called over his shoulder as he returned to the kitchen.  


Janie started in on her pie while Neil tentatively sipped his water, pretending not to feel eyes on his back from the man in the booth. The swinging door to the kitchen had a small, round window set in it, and when it settled after Nicky’s exit Neil was relieved to find he could see the reflection of the man in the glass, and that he didn’t seem to be making any moves to leave his booth.  


“Oh,” said Janie. Neil glanced at her— she had an unsettling glazed look in her eyes as she stared at the half-eaten slice of pie on her plate.  


“You okay?” Neil broke the silence after a beat.  


“Oh, yeah,” She turned and blinked at him, but the distance in her gaze remained. “It’s just good pie.” She took a long, slow slurp of her milkshake and Neil, unsure how to respond, returned to watching the man’s reflection as if he were waiting for Nicky to come out of the kitchen with his burger.  


By the time Nicky brought his food, Janie had finished hers and was staring out the window at the dark night. Rather than going back into the kitchen, Nicky lingered at the counter, watching Janie’s thousand-yard stare quietly, and Neil kept an eye on him while also trying to eat the burger so that they could get the hell out of this fucking diner.  


The burger was good, satisfying for him in the ways that sometimes food wasn’t, nowadays. But, before he was halfway done with it, Janie stood abruptly from her stool, a little off balance and a truly concerning look on her face that was somehow a mix of that far-away quality with fierce determination.  


“I’ve— I’ve gotta go,” She announced to the diner. Nicky just nodded at her with sad eyes, didn’t say anything about paying the check as Janie walked to the front door in a daze.  


Neil hastily wrapped his burger in the wax paper it came with and made to follow her out the door, when Nicky called out “Hey!” and a hand clamped down on his shoulder. Neil hit it away on instinct and turned to find the man from the booth behind him, his eyes flat.  


Janie stopped by the door when Nicky yelled, and seemed to remember Neil’s presence for the first time in a while.  


“I promised to get you to Bozeman,” she said in a quiet voice, like she was remembering it again.  


“Oh,” said Nicky, and he sounded… really sad. Neil felt like he was stuck in a play where everyone else had a script but him, and he shifted his weight to bolt for the door when the blond man reached out and snatched the wrapped remains of his burger out of his hand.  


“Don’t worry about him,” the blond man said. He walked back to the counter and dropped Neil’s burger into the basket it was served in. “I’m headed that out that way, I’ll give him a ride.” Neil scowled at the man, but before he could say anything the bell above the door rang, and Janie had left the diner for the parking lot.  


Neil darted back to the counter for his burger and turned to leave when Nicky spoke up.  


“Woah, kid, stay a while! At least finish your burger.”  


“I’ve gotta get to Bozeman,” Neil made for the door. “She’s my ride.”  


The blond man stepped forward to block his path. Neil realized that he was actually a little bit taller than the blond, which was novel.  


“She wasn’t headed anywhere you’re ready for,” the man said, giving him a pointed once-over.  


“What does that even mean?” Neil bit back a snarl. Looking out the glass front doors, he realized that Janie’s rig was gone, without him ever hearing the engine or seeing the powerful headlights come on. “Where did she go?”  


“Oh crap, was that your first time?” called Nicky from the counter. “Good thing she was cute. She’s passed on, hun, her spirit’s at peace and shit. You did good!”  


“What?”  


“Moved on,” offered the blond man, and rather than turning back and forth between the two of them, Neil took a few steps back so he could keep them both in his sight. It meant backing away from the door, but the blond man was between Neil and that exit anyway. “Went to the light at the end of the tunnel. Shuffled off this mortal coil.” His delivery stayed entirely monotone, which was unsettling.  


“She— she wasn’t dead,” he said, a little defensively. “She drove me halfway across Wyoming and Montana. Was she dead that whole time?”  


“You couldn’t tell?” Nicky cocked is head to the side.  


“What, that I accidentally hitched a ride with some sort of ghost?” Neil felt like this situation was rapidly taking a turn for the surreal. He edged towards the kitchen entrance, hoping the back door he theorized about was easily spotted once he ran back there.

“Oh, honey,” said Nicky, and the pity in his eyes made Neil’s gut squirm.

“You know you’re dead, too, right?”

 

“—and out. Breathe in,” Neil opened his eyes and saw his shoes. His head was curled between his knees, and he was sitting on a linoleum floor. 

“And out,” there was someone touching the back of his neck, a solid weight, like an anchor. They were breathing exaggeratedly slow, but Neil still found his own breathing slowing to match it, and eventually the beating of his heart faded away, too.

He looked up. There was a blond man standing over him, not touching his neck anymore and— right. The diner. He was dead.  


Was he dead? Looking back on it, he can’t remember if he ever checked the passenger seat of the car when it was burning on the beach. All he could do was confirm that his mother was long gone, her body already charred by the time he woke up— or maybe he hadn’t?— and found her.  


Was she passed on, too? Or was he going to run into her somewhere on the road? The thought made his gut tie itself into further knots, although he felt split between relief, fear, and guilt about both.  


“I’m so sorry,” The waiter— Nicky— was saying. “You seemed stable, so I thought you were just freaked out because you were bringing her here.”  


“When were you born?” interrupted the bond man.  


Neil swallowed, remembered the birthday on his last license. “1993.”  


“How old are you?” asked Nicky, sounding alarmed.  


“Nineteen,” bit Neil. “Or, at least I was.”  


“Joyride gone wrong?” asked the blond man.  


“Andrew!” scolded Nicky. “You don’t have to say,” he offered Neil.  


“Hmm, no,” The man— Andrew— continued like Nicky hadn’t said anything. “I think you’re a runner. What, you didn’t look both ways when you crossed the street, roadkill?”  


It was far from the worst thing anyone’s said about him— but something about Andrew’s perfectly level voice made the disturbing image sound mundane.  


“Something like that,” Neil said, drawing his words out like Andrew’d hit a mark. From the way he rolled his eyes as he stood back up, it didn’t land.  


“Whatever, roadkill. Finish your burger.” He turned and returned to his booth, picking up his spoon and digging back in.  


Neil warily approached his seat at the counter— Nicky had, apparently, cleared away Janie’s plates and refilled his water.  


The burger was still good, but the fluorescent lights seemed colder than before, and he shivered. After he finished, Nicky brought out a basket of fries for him, waving off any money.  


“So, what is this place?” Neil asked him cautiously.  


“Oh, the Foxhole? It’s been the last stop for, like, forever. Wymack’s technically the owner, if you drop by more often you’ll probably meet him. He’s a good guy, set me up with this job! Sucker for a sob story, so he’ll like you just fine.” He gestured to the quickly-emptying basket of fries between them. “Something about it being in the dark roads means even people who normally can’t eat can have our stuff. Makes us pretty popular with you hitchhikers.”  


“Dark roads?”  


Nicky stuck his thumb out towards the window. “The endless plains out there. We’re in sort of a medium-space here, not so dark that anything nasty comes by, but not the lightest place you’ll find, either.”  


“Yeah,” said Neil, as if what Nicky had said was a reasonable statement. “I think I’ve walked that highway before. What sort of “nasty”!comes by?”  


“Eh, if you stick to a highway you’re probably fine,” Nicky said, wiping down the countertop absently. “But if you go deeper—darker— there’s a whole ecosystem of things that’ll eat a ghost, no problem.”  


That was… unsettling to know. “So I can die twice?”  


“Oh, uh, no… if you get consumed by something down there, I’m pretty sure it’s way worse than what we’ve got going here.” He waved an arm to encompass the diner.  


“Are you dead too?” Neil winced, not having planned to ask so bluntly. “I mean, if you don’t mind talking about it.”  


“Oh, yeah, I kicked it.” Nicky waved a hand like he was shooing away a fly. “I’m waiting for my husband to die, too— his name is Erik. He’s the greatest, just six feet of emotionally available German hunk—”  


“Nicky,” said Andrew, where he’d appeared two stools to Neil’s right to set his empty ice cream bowl on the counter with a hollow thunk. “I’m heading out.”  


“Take him with you!” said Nicky. “Sorry, I didn’t get your name, hun?”  


“Neil,” he muttered.  


“Take Neil with you!” repeated Nicky.  


Andrew slid him a cold glance, then spun on his heel and stormed out to the parking lot.  


“That’s the closest you’ll get to a “Come on!” from him,” said Nicky apologetically. “But if you aren’t a douche he’ll take you wherever. He’s got nowhere to be.” He made a few shooing motions at Neil.  


“Go, go— I’m sure I’ll see you around sometime! Don’t be a stranger!”  


Neil stumbled out to the dark parking lot, pulling Janie’s old flannel tight against the chill. Not that it did much, but— was that because it was cold out or because he was dead?  


Andrew was leaning against the hood of the old black car, smoking a cigarette.  


“So, roadkill,” he said, and for a moment his eyes flashed in the dark like they held a live flame. “You got a destination in mind?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A much shorter chapter, but I’ve got the next one all lined up already.  
> starts where chapter 1 ends  
> contains a brief description of a panic attack

Neil shrugged. “Wherever, I guess.”

Andrew exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Not Bozeman?” he asked sarcastically. “You were pretty set on it.”

Neil shrugs again, crossing his arms to dig his hands into Janie’s flannel. “Yeah, well, we’re not exactly in Montana, are we?”

Apparently that was the right answer. Andrew barked a laugh— just one, sharp and loud— and tossed his cigarette aside, walking around the car.

“True enough,” He muttered, opening the driver’s side door. “Get in.”

Neil took one last look through the diner windows. Nicky, who seemed to have been watching the tense exchange, threw him an enthusiastic thumbs up. Neil got in the car.

The inside was all black leather, worn and soft. Andrew stared out the windshield as Neil settled into the passenger seat.

“Seatbelt,” he ordered.

“Huh?” is all Neil could say before he was jerked forward, torso slamming into the dash as the car peeled out of the parking lot. Andrew let out another of those barking laughs as the car spun to land on the road.

“Seatbelt,” he repeated, the car at a full stop on the highway. Neil scrambled to find the seatbelt and click it in, the car tearing off as soon as he was done. 

While the road was relatively smooth, no potholes or hills, the car ride was surprisingly unpleasant, with constant shuddering and bumping, and even sudden changes in speeds, though Neil could see Andrew’s hand remained steady on the gearshift. 

“What is this?” Neil gritted out, jaw clenched so as not to bite his own tongue in half with the rattling of the car.

“She’ll get it out of her system in a minute,” Andrew said mildly, and sure enough, within ten minutes the ride slowly calmed down.

“What was that?” Neil repeated, the change leaving him tense and jumpy.

“The car hates me,” Andrew replied calmly.

“Sure,” Neil huffed. “Is the car also dead?”

“Yep.”

Neil sighed. “And how does a car die? Is it no longer manufactured? Is every broken car a ghost car?”

Andrew shrugged. “Most all dead racers come with the cars we drove in life. Not sure beyond that.”

Neil looked around at the car incredulously. It was black and shiny, sure, but it also had a hatchback. “You raced this car?”

Andrew glanced away from the road. “Never said that, did I?”

Like drawing blood from a stone. Neil turned to the window, staring out at the huge grey expanse that flew by much faster in this car than Janie’s rig. “Are all dead people ghosts?” He asked, not really expecting an answer. 

“Nope,” Andrew responded, but didn’t elaborate.

Silence stretched for the next few miles before Neil tried again.

“What makes someone end up a ghost?”

“Why are you so curious?” Andrew countered.

“I just found out I’m dead,” Neil said flatly, turning to look at him. “Humor me.”

“I don’t humor anyone,” Andrew said with a straight face. 

Neil sighed. “I think I died with someone else. Can I find them somehow?”

Andrew hummed. “If they weren’t with you when you woke up, you’re probably in the clear.”

“How do I know, though?”

“How does anyone know anyone? Either you’ll see them again or you won’t.”

Neil turned back to the window. “Why me, though?”

Andrew sighed. “People who lived on the road, who died on the road, they come back on the road.”

“What does that mean?”

Andrew shot him a look. “You travel a lot in life? Did you stay in any place too long? Did you die trying to find your way back home?”

Neil felt like his heart stopped. “What? What are you talking about?”

Andrew stares out at the road. “You’re a hitcher. A hitchhiking spirit. The kind drivers pick up on the road, only to turn around in a few miles and realize you’re long gone. Will-you-take-me-home, only to crash your car types.” His voice creaked, like he didn’t make a habit of saying so much in such a short time. “You’ve never heard ghost stories before?”

Neil shook his head. At all of it. He never had time for ghost stories, never realized that what he’d been doing had become a habit. A compulsion. 

“What about you, then?” He accused.

“Ghost rider,” Andrew answered flatly. 

“And what’s your deal?”

“I’m a ghost. I ride the roads.” His tone somehow got flatter. Neil scoffed. 

Outside the window, something flashed by, catching Neil’s attention. He turned to look for it, but it was gone, even in the side mirror. But, looking out, he realized they weren’t in the grey limbo they’d started in. There were trees in the distance, across fields of grass that the headlights caught the edges of, and sunrise seemed to be coming from somewhere.

“How?” Was all he could think to ask.

“You get a feel for it,” Andrew replied. “Like coming up for air when you swim.”

Neil had only ever swam in extreme circumstances. His mother teaching him. A river in Ohio when they were running. The transition between the dark roads and the real world seemed calmer. A sigh of relief.

The car ate up the miles as they drove on in silence. They passed into New Mexico, of all places, when Neil worked up to pose a question that had been bothering him.

“And Nicky?” Neil asked reluctantly. “He said he was dead but— does he stay at the diner?”  
Andrew was quiet for a long stretch of time, to the point that Neil assumed he wouldn’t be getting an answer, before he spoke.

“Nicky was killed on the road,” the leather of the steering wheel creaked in his grip. “But it was a different story. He didn’t live on it, doesn’t have to be on the road like we do. Wymack gave him a place there because he wants to wait for Erik, like he said.”

Andrew glared at the road, and Neil realized he had more color to him than before. His eyes were hazel.

Another thought struck him like a bolt.

He’d died with his contacts in.

He scrambled for the visor mirror, flipping it down and open.

Nathan’s eyes stared back at him. Neil felt like he was drowning.

“Fuck, hey,” Andrew was saying, but Neil couldn’t hear him over his own breathing. The car rolled to a stop and Neil pushed the door open, falling out onto the gravel on the shoulder.

The rocks bit into his palms, but it was like he was wearing gloves and couldn’t directly feel them. He pushed his hands down harder and felt his bones creak. His father’s eyes. He fucking died and they still wouldn’t leave him be.

A black boot stepped into his vision.

“Hey. Neil.” It was Andrew again. “Take a fucking breath.”

Neil tried, but his lungs felt more insistent on squeezing any air left out of them. 

“Or don’t, Christ,” Andrew continued. “It’s not like it’ll kill you.”

It’s not like it would kill him. The thought cut through his panic, and he stopped breathing. Stopped trying to breathe, stopped forcing his lungs open. It felt like holding his breath but without the pressure building in his chest. It was surprisingly calming. 

After a few minutes, he rolled off his hands and leaned against the car door. Andrew looked down at him. Neil still wasn’t breathing.

Andrew shrugged and walked a few paces away, lighting up another cigarette. The smoke blew past him and Neil inhaled again, catching the smell of it. 

He remembered long nights when his mother kept watch over motel stairwells, long days they spent on sun-bleached roads, shorter breaks when she’d sneak a smoke at a gas station.

He took a breath.

They stayed like that for a while, and the sun came up over a mountain range to their right. Eventually Andrew dropped his filter and turned back to the car. Neil climbed in after him.

The car took off down the road, jostling and shuddering like before, and the two of them rode on in silence.

The sun was climbing towards noon when Andrew found a rest stop a few miles outside of Albuquerque.

“Out,” He ordered, but not rudely. Just a statement. Neil climbed out, shivering in the morning mist. It reminded him to ask something else.

“What about the cold? Do you get that too?”

Andrew looked at him through the window. “Get a stranger’s jacket.” He motioned to the flannel Neil was wearing. “Food someone else buys you. Roadside kindness.” He spat out the last words like they burned him. 

“That wasn’t what I asked,” Neil pointed out.   
Andrew let out one last barking laugh before he sped out of the parking lot and down the highway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out this whole “learning to make your brain function” gig is harder than it sounds! you know what prolonged inpatient stays make me crave? cigarettes and car rides hell yeah

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i can be reached at nbbula on tumblr


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